My second novel, Werewolf Parallel is released today, alongside the shiny new version of Daemon Parallel. Hurrah! Please make your local bookshop’s day (and mine too) by rushing into their papery book-scented arms and demanding a copy at once. I’m breathlessly excited – do tweet (@roy_gill) or message or tumblr or blog and let me know what you think…

The writing is sharp, gripping and darkly funny, and the magical world hidden just beneath the surface of modern–day Edinburgh is brilliantly realised… If you’re looking for a magical read with the perfect blend of mystery, excitement, humour and tension – a read which will keep you turning the pages well into the small hours of the morning – this is the book for you…

My publishers KelpiesTeen have been active over on tumblr – you can check out a Roy Gill infographic, and a Parallel Prelude set between both books, with a gorgeous new illustration by Mark Manley featuring Cameron and Morgan climbing a snowbound Blackford Hill. (Also available to download FREE on scribd – a longer version will be released soon too). You can also find out about the other books in the KelpiesTeen range.

KelpiesTeen have posted Spotify links to a Daemon Parallel (“Closer than you think…”) and a Werewolf Parallel (“The wolf has woken…”) playlist: music that I listened to while writing or occasionally even helped inspire moments in the novels. I wrote a troublingly detailed list, explaining what track goes where – if you’re very, very (un)lucky, that might turn up in a future blog. For now, have a listen and marvel / mock my taste in music…

I’ll be helping to launch the range next week with a schools event at Merchiston Castle on Monday 24 March. Then, on Tuesday 25 I’ll be speaking about writing Young Adult fiction at the regular Edinburgh Literary Salon at the Wash Bar on the Mound at 6PM (a free event aimed at those involved or interested in writing and publishing). Finally, on Friday 28th I’ll be at the official KelpiesTeen range launch party, reading from and signing both books. The launch is very nearly sold out – but send me a message if you’re interested and we’ll see if you can be smuggled in…

Finally, I’m hugely thrilled to say that What Noise productions have added both Daemon Parallel and Werewolf Parallel to their eclectic range of audiobooks, available for download and purchase on MP3 CD. I can’t wait to hear the readings!

Released today – an ebook sampler Werewolves, Mindreaders and Shape Shifters that contains the very first preview of Werewolf Parallel, alongside Mind Blind by Lari Don and Beneath by Gill Arbuthnott, and the opening chapters of Daemon Parallel too.

Yesterday was World Book Day, and I got an unexpected surprise: the very first finished copies of Werewolf Parallel and the new edition of Daemon Parallel arrived. Here I am looking just a little pleased and proud, not far from my publisher’s offices.

The route to getting a book published seems to be a series of steps where it slowly becomes more and more real – like summoning a ghost through a seance, luring something impossible and unlikely into the everyday world…

First there’s an idea, then a pitch. Then – if you’re lucky – there’s a contract. Next you just have to write the thing, and there’s many points in that process where you don’t believe it’s ever going to be finished at all. Eventually, after much fidgeting and screaming and industrial quantities of tea, you have a complete draft – a huge stack of paper, sitting on your desk. That’s the first moment I really believe in the book existing, I think, but it’s still a good distance off….

Next comes edits, and re-drafts and changes. Cover designs appear, and blurbs and marketing ideas. New voices are joining the seance, and you’ve got to concentrate – try and make sure you’ve all got the same idea of the presence you are summoning into existence, and you’re all dreaming of the same thing (because if you haven’t, what strange chimera might come through instead?). You need to defend your vision, coax it through. Then you get proofs (and I’ve blogged about that before) and it’s nearly there… The words on the page are typeset with the right fonts and headings and effects, and it’s starting to take shape, to look like an actual printed book. But here and there the magic is skew-wiff – did you really mean to use that word twice in the same sentence? – and the spell needs tweaking. You have to focus some more…

Finally, the book itself – the ghost enters the room, fully formed… But that’s not where the magic ends. Because the more people who believe in it, the realer it becomes. I know I’ll get a little jolt of the impossible the first time I see a copy in a bookshop, in a library, in the hand of a reader…

It’s just going to keep getting more solid, more real. The seance is over – the presence has materialized.

I must admit I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do there. I like the idea of re-blogging some of the amazing art out there – and how good would it be to find some Daemon Parallel fan art? I also think I might post some of my own pictures of Edinburgh – it’s a marvelously atmospheric (and sometimes downright spooky) city. Perhaps people would like to see some of the locations that feature in the books?